Sunday, March 11, 2012

Old School 12 Step Group Suggestions

A Question and Answer Communication from
One New Group Appraising and Planning a “Stick to the Winners” Old School
Recovery Approach

[Name removed to
preserve anonymity]

My comment:

Dear S.: You called it like it is; and yours is a good,
experience-driven observation and stance.

I intend to publish anonymously your comments because they are
frank, truthful, participatory, and helpful.

As to leadership, our task is training – not leading; and we are
getting a good start with a small group of Christian AAs right here in Kihei.
We have met three times now. The first time was an organizing group, and they
like old school and enchancing literature. The second meeting was one in which
we filmed our first guide and did it with Bob’s help at our Salvation Army
office, and a new=comer new group Christian was there to observe and comment. Yesterday,
we met with a very strong personality who will be important in the organizing
and is supportive; and here are some ideas he’d like to have tossed around by
the Steering Committee before the group is started:

A meeting that doesn’t push conference-approved literature alone
but which presents it as an enhancement of the history, reliance on God, and
recovery work. Something our Guide does.

Speaking for myself, the aims are: (1) To learn and provide
content, not to lead and command. (2) To grow with each meeting and workshop in
order to get a flavor for what is needed by a particular person, fellowship,
meeting, or group and the suggestions for that particular group. (3) To avoid a
one-size-fits-all approach, but to continue listening, helping, researching,
reporting, and helping shape each group’s interest and objective. (4) To
encourage an autonomous attitude of each group, meeting, or fellowship by
having that group seek God’s guidance first, make decisions based on that, keep
the decisions in writing and use them to guide the leaders, the listeners, and
the meetings, and to learn by doing.

A prayerful group
conscience which adopts written minutes, which picks the date, time, place,
format, and first secretary. One which adopts a group conscience that
conference=approved literature will be on the front table and approved and
other literature such as the Bible, devotionals, our materials will also be
selected and approved and located on a separate table. The group will have a
name which stresses old school 12 Step study meeting. A major point was that
the leader must be trained. We will help with their first few meetings because
they asked us to. We will have some twenty short films that will be on the web
and available for training, display, or individual viewing. We will have the How
to Guidebook which will be renamed “Stick with the Winners.” All varieties
of victims—alcoholics, addicts, prescription pill junkies—may participate, the thought
being that both Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob suffered from drugs and alcohol as do
most newcomers today and hence are often told to describe themselves as alcoholic/addicts.
Also that it is not the common bond that binds suffering souls, but rather
their desperation and the growing confidence that God’s love, power,
forgiveness, and healing provide the answer.

A typical meeting may have a speaker address (after preparation)
a topic such as How the First Three Got Sober, call on participants for
questions or comments, insure that they are ruled out of order if they stray
into psychobabble, religious disputing, or girl friend problems. Prevent
domination by elder statesmen who have never advanced in their learning but
have expertise in stating over and over what little they may know or have heard
without study .

Each meeting will have an available study library, primarily on
hand and available for those attending a meeting: For example, 20 plus Bibles. 12 have
already been donated. 50 plus P-53 pamphlets—we hope will be obtained and
donated, several DR. BOB books (three of which have been donated), as many Big
Books and NA books as we can get through donations and friends. A group of our historical
books for use if desired. Our hope is to have one or more benefactors buy many
of the reference books so that they are available at no charge and during a
meeting as a resource library for leaders, speakers, and “students.” This
simply means a start-up resource without expecting members to fund it.

There are many suggested meeting topics, which we are starting
to film now, and which are much covered in the How to Guide, but will be
specific and brief and cover such varied topics as to (using the Bible,
Conference-approved literature, and other literature geared to old school A.A.
and telling how to approach a newcomer, what sponsorship should do, how to take
the 12 Steps, the Bible roots, the Oxford Group backdrop, the original 7
point program, and the sixteen practices – to mention just a few. There is far
more already available than most have ever heard or will hear in meetings.

These would not be
lecture or teaching meetings per se or typical A.,A. beginners, speaker, Step
Study, Big Book, or speaker discussion meetings to the extent that the members
are wandering instead of learning. A basic idea is the Joe and Charlie Big Book
Seminars – except this will be many meetings instead of three fact=filled days.
Many leaders instead of one. Guides and films to help. And member participation
if appropriate and relevant.

Because of the time you took, I do believe you and your pastor
and the other lady can, in due course, help us in shaping each type
of approach by International Christian Recovery Coalition participant leaders to
the taste and mission of each group, and yet help us build as we have on what
we hear and learn and record from personal meetings like the one in Oahu

Thanks again.

God bless,

Dick B.

Author, 43 titles & over 800 articles on A.A. History and the
Christian Recovery Movement

I am not the expert here. Here is my input. Go and
make disciples. Quite a tall order, Jews and Samarians, Christian addicts, to
agnostic alcoholics, emotional disconnected people , Bi polar, brain chemical
unbalance, toxic element exposure, and the ones that don’t want to get well ,
and PTSD. And on and on.

There is no one definition of addiction. Unlike cancer, or
polio. Dr Bob said in one of his speeches that there was a limited amount of
information about alcoholism. We still deal with that in 2012. Even your book
God and Alcoholism made it clear there are many camps with Phd(s) that
still disagree.

So with this walking thru the door every day I can only pass
on what I have observed.

1)Education on addiction( addicts and alcoholics are wired
differently) than “ normees”

2)By Gods design we were never designed to function, emotionally or
intellectually with mind altering mood changing substances 24/7, or sober
to function in dysfunctional relationships.

Recovery = Relationships

Safe people, people who are mature enough in the knowledge, and
emotions of Christ, WHO are able to come along side to mentor and disciple , to
submit Gods resources to every one desiring to change.

AA conference approved material meetings and study groups, that’s
an area by area mine field. Some sections of the US and the world for that
matter have more or less Christian backgrounds and by people groups are open to
an introduction of The Christian background and History of AA. AA may be
more open. Have you ever , read the 11th step from the How and Why
of NA I’ll quote some of it ( pg 108) “ one of the basic principles of recovery
in Narcotics Anonymous our absolute and unconditional freedom to believe
in any Higher Power we choose and, of course, our right to communicate with
that Higher Power in whatever conforms to our individual beliefs.”

If you don’t have a facilitator to let your group know that is the
glass front door to Macy’s for Satans kingdom. Your group is in for some
trials. For along time I tried to avoid reading that section of the 11th
step. My growth in Jesus and the introduction of some Christian
materials helped most of our group to figure out that NA and the ones
that wrote the literature were confused, unbelievers. AKA still lost .

Acts 1-6 is a backbone for our Four Square denomination. House churches
and minichurches are a fundamental tool for members. Out of an addicts and
alcoholics circle I found we all have issues sober, bankers, pastors,
wives, teenagers, were all the same ( and should be treated as a work in
progress, by all). therefore introduction of our study groups to the body of
believes is very important to eliminate the thinking that were different
in our thinking our problems and solving them are any different from others who
are growing in the Lord and reality.

My particular church is focusing specifically on relationships and
getting away from numbers. Being rather than doing.

I believe that the 12 step movement is going to be ( happening
already) passed over , given up on because of the legal / religious
1st amendment court actions. With treatment
facilities unable to enforce clients to AA and NA meetings, I think we will see
a huge drop in attendance. We are already seeing the atheists changing
the 12 steps totally writing God out of the steps.

Because they need members to keep “corporate AA” or NA alive the
newcomers will actually be the death of the fellowships. I don’t know if you
have noticed that the younger generation coming into treatment ,
they don’t represent a different cross section of our country’s
direction, they are a mirror of it. The old timers in meetings will
dwindle by attrition.

I believe that God has allowed our will to show that without Him
our recovery numbers are dismal. I believe our strength now lies in the hands of
the church. A reformation of the church to actually begin to understand Christ
and His role in relationships. The community has not produced results,
and the church has not either. If Christ and the Body of Christ
becomes the primary solution for the addict and alcoholic we will have run the
race well.

About Me

Richard G. Burns holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Stanford University where he was Case Editor of the Stanford Law Review. He was a Phi Beta Kappa in his Junior Year at UC Berkeley. There he received an A.A. degree in economics with Honorable Mention. He was an Information and Education Specialist in the United States Army where he held the rank of Sgt. He attended the information-education school at Washington & Lee University. He practiced law in California from 1951 to 1986. He was president of the Corte Madera Chamber of Commerce, Corte Madera Center Merchants Council, Mill Valley Community Church, Redwoods Retirement Center, and Almonte District Improvemen Club. Also elected Director of the Almonte Sanitary District. He is a writer, historian, retired attorney, Bible student, CDAAC, and active recovered member of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous with continuous sobriety beginning April 21, 1986.

He writes under the pen name Dick B. He has devoted 24 years to researching the history and successes of the early A.A. Christian Fellowship in Akron; and published 46 titles, more than 1450 articles, and materials on Facebook, Twitter, MauiHistorian.Blogspot.com, Alcoholics Anonymous History.com, In the Rooms, Linked-in, Tumbler, MauiHistorian.Word Press.com, Aa Historian WordPress.com, AA History with Dick B. on cyber recovery social, Dick B. YouTube Channel, Articles Base, GoArticles.com, SearchWarp, Self Growth Experts, Social network forums on International Christian Recovery Coalition Forums, Recovery Internet Fellowship, Cyber Recovery, Daily Recovery, Christian Recovery Ministries, radio, TV, and over 70 audio blogs on the history subject. He regularly conducts radio interviews of Christian Recovery Leaders and Workers on www.ChristianRecoveryRadio.com.

He is Executive Director of the International Christian Recovery Coalition and of Freedom Ranch Maui Incorporated. He is an Advisor to God's Way Ministry, a Christian Church and is also a consultant to Wyoming Pacific Oil Company. Listed in Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Law, Who's Who in Finance, and Gale's Contemporary Authors